The entertainment industry's ongoing battle with online swapping and copyright infringement has entered another realm: movie theaters.
Fox Group chief executive officer Peter Chernin said Tuesday that an unnamed leading theater chain has agreed to run public service announcements that warn against copyright infringement just before feature films are shown.
The spots claim that downloading movies instead of buying a ticket or a video would hurt the industry's behind-the-scenes workers, including makeup artists and custodians.
"These are people's livelihoods at stake. It's not just a bunch of fat-cat Hollywood people," Chernin said.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Malcolm said 500,000 movies a day are downloaded illegally, calling the Internet "the world's largest copy machine."
"Stealing is stealing is stealing, whether it's done with sleight of hand by sticking something in a pocket or it's done with the click of a mouse."
This is just another attempt by the entertainment industry to find the right guilt trip to levy on consumers who find the prices of music and movies too exorbitant to justify, so they break copyright law instead.
If the entertainment industry wants to combat piracy, how about lowering prices instead of either raising them or spending more money to fight the losing battle? Quite frankly, if consumers were able to afford the rising costs of music and movies, they would be more apt to buy rather than steal.
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